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6 - Satiation

from Part I - General Issues in Acceptability Experiments

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2021

By
William Snyder
Edited by
Grant Goodall
Grant Goodall
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego
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Summary

Satiation refers to an increase, over time, in the willingness of a native-speaker consultant to agree that a given syntactic structure is grammatically well-formed. Studies show that satiation can be induced under laboratory conditions, within a single testing session; that the effect is restricted to a small number of sentence types (chiefly those involving wh-extraction from wh-islands, subjects, and certain complex NPs); that experimentally induced satiation can persist for at least four weeks; and that satiation sometimes ”carries over” to syntactically related sentence types. Tables are provided showing the methods and findings of satiation studies on seven different types of syntactic violation. Larger issues include (i) whether the satiable sentence types form a natural class within generative syntax; (ii) whether satiation is a unitary phenomenon, or merely a family of similar phenomena; and (iii) how, in principle, satiation can serve as a tool for language research.

Keywords

satiationsyntactic satiationgrammaticalityacceptabilitylinguistic judgmentwh-movementisland effectsprocessing difficultyexperimental syntax
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Syntax , pp. 154 - 180
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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  • Satiation
  • Edited by Grant Goodall, University of California, San Diego
  • Book: The Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Syntax
  • Online publication: 16 December 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108569620.007
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  • Satiation
  • Edited by Grant Goodall, University of California, San Diego
  • Book: The Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Syntax
  • Online publication: 16 December 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108569620.007
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Satiation
  • Edited by Grant Goodall, University of California, San Diego
  • Book: The Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Syntax
  • Online publication: 16 December 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108569620.007
Available formats
×